[paxys]

Everyone wonders why there's no widely used alternative to Chrome, then someone makes a great one (Firefox) and nobody is happy.

In reality, there are two categories of users – one group (the vast majority) is perfectly happy with the status quo regardless of privacy issues or anything else, and the other is simply looking to endlessly nitpick and complain about everything in pursuit of some hypothetical perfection that can never be reached. There's no wonder then that new products will mostly cater to the first group than the second.

[pessimizer]

This is a bad view of users and people in general. It's also a really bizarre view of the Firefox complainers, who are the ones demanding that the status quo be kept. One can end up in contradictory situations like that when you judge people based purely on how much they agree with you, or with institutions you support. People who hate the thing you hate are not "haters," and people who like the thing you hate are not "sheep." Very few people are choosing their opinions in order to annoy you, or in order to annoy Mozilla.

Supporting the management status quo is the opposite of supporting the product status quo; Firefox now is an absolutely unrecognizable product compared to Firefox 5 years ago. Not coincidentally, Chrome isn't unrecognizable, it's dependable. I wonder why it's successful? Is it because google isn't playing fairly, or because anyone who has ever been satisfied with Chrome has never been given any good reason to leave, while every change in firefox seems tuned to peel off 2% of the userbase?

If there's an effective way Google isn't playing fair, it's probably that they have some indirect but strong influence in directing Firefox development.

[fabrice_d]

Yes, the way they influence Firefox development is called sabotage: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686

[mmastrac]

I thought this was a bit of a conspiracy theory at the start, but it's starting to feel more likely.

[parineum]

All this looks like to me is Google developers use Chrome (surprise!). I've seen plenty of issues exactly like this at web shops where developers primarily use Chrome.

[fouc]

You missed the part how it was about the conflict of interest. "We're on the same side" wasn't really true.

Especially at the higher level, Mozilla was complicit in accepting money from a competitor.

Make no mistake, that absolutely distorted how they ran the company over the next decade. That's why Firefox is so "meh" right now, why Servo got killed, why Mozilla is being seriously mismanaged.

[parineum]

I use Firefox. It's not "meh". It does it's job. It's a browser, I don't need bells and whistles.

[fouc]

I don't use any chromium-based browsers

[kk6mrp]

I just can't understand why Chrome can't handle a hundred open tabs if the developers use it primarily. Firefox handles it with about the same RAM usage as six hundred open tabs.

[mmastrac]

The parent of your post is pretty accurate. I've complained about it before, but Firefox is unfairly targeted by an outsized number of complainers here on HN.

[pessimizer]

I disagree that it's unfair or outsized. You're talking about a browser that has lost 95% of its userbase and is financially dependent on its main competitor. The complainers are drawn from the tiny proportion of the people dissatisfied with Firefox development who stayed. The other 98% just fucked off somewhere else like they were told to.

[mmastrac]

"just fucked off somewhere else like they were told to"

Ah yeah, that seems like a completely reasonable interpretation of Mozilla's actions.

[moonshinefe]

Here's a quote directly from you in this very same topic:

> The comments like this from people who will complain about everything are completely valueless.

> We're lucky to have an alternative to the WebKit oligopoly. If you don't like Firefox, just stick with the other browsers and let the rest of us that are trying to prevent a monoculture continue our work.

Looks like you're doing the job just fine by yourself.

[mmastrac]

And from your comment history you seem to be over-blowing telemetry privacy issues yourself.

[dblohm7]

> has lost 95% of its userbase

That's not an accurate number.

[chasil]

I am partial to the Bromite fork of Chrome on Android.

It has built-in adblock, and DNS-over-HTTPs in the setup menus.

https://www.bromite.org/

I understand that stock Chromium can do DoH with options on the command line; I have been meaning to set this up in a few places.